


Exposed

by Lady_in_Red



Series: Action [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Actors, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Developing Relationship, F/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 05:14:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29994426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: Brienne thought she could keep hooking up with the biggest action hero in Westeros and no one would ever find out. She was wrong.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: Action [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2206359
Comments: 26
Kudos: 245





	Exposed

Brienne had been dreading this scene since she first read the script. A small boy needed to climb a pile of junked appliances as he fled from the bad guys, and for reasons Brienne would never understand, they’d cast a young actor who had mentioned his fear of heights in multiple interviews. It wasn’t a difficult scene technically, but to Robin the fifteen-foot stack of old washing machines might as well be the Mother of Mountains. They’d been rehearsing all morning, and he was finally climbing, a safety line affixed to his belt. Even so, first thing this morning, he’d slipped on their first attempt and cried for half an hour while his mother glared at Brienne. 

On their sixth run through the scene, he was finally getting the hang of where the hand and footholds were, and mounting the pile at the speed the scene required. 

In her pocket, her phone buzzed. And buzzed again. And then vibrated long enough that it was clearly ringing. But the wide-eyed boy, whose fear would thankfully play well on camera, needed her full attention. 

After the eighth run-through, Brienne let the kid go, and he’d run back to his mother for a huge hug and the promise of ice cream. Her phone had continued buzzing off and on throughout rehearsal. When she finally dug it out of her pocket, Brienne had so many new messages she couldn’t even scroll all the way through them, plus four missed calls. Jaime, her agent, Catelyn, and Jaime again. 

But before she could decide who to call first, her father called. The odds that this was a casual call were slim. Her father called at noon on Sunday, every week without fail. The last time he’d called at an odd time, a tree had fallen on his house during a storm.

Brienne assured her next actor that she’d be right with him, closed the door of her rehearsal room, took a deep breath and answered the call. “Hi, Dad.” Even to her ears her cheer rang false.

“Don’t ‘hi, Dad’ me, Brienne Rhae Tarth. People are talking about you at the grocery store.” He sounded almost as pissed as the time she’d tried to practice swordfighting with her family’s ancient ancestral sword, the only thing of value they owned.

“Why?” No one ever talked about Brienne, unless it was the local busybodies clucking about how she’d never find a man when she spent all her time beating them up on camera. 

“Why can’t you just find a nice, normal boy and settle down? No, you have to get mixed up with some actor.” She could hear his frustration now. He’d never understood her need to leave Tarth, to have a life that didn’t necessarily revolve around a home and children. 

What had he heard? The rumor mill on Tarth was wrong as often as it was right. “I spend time with a lot of actors, Dad. That’s my job.” Brienne sure as hell was not about to tip her hand without knowing what cards he held. 

He huffed and snorted a bit, clearly uncomfortable with this conversation but unwilling to drop the subject. Her teen years had been a festival of awkward conversations. “You went to his movie premiere. That one.”

Brienne relaxed a little. That wasn’t so bad. “Jaime Lannister? That was months ago, and I told you all about it. Remember? They served those weird little shrimp we always threw back and acted like they were a delicacy.”

Her father made an unhappy noise in his throat. “There are photos of you two all over each other. I saw them on the Web.” The disapproval in his voice was clear. For as open-minded as he’d claimed to be while taking her to the doctor for birth control before college, and insisting she could talk to him about anything, her father still liked to think of her as his little girl. 

She couldn’t exactly tell him that she was casually fucking one of the biggest movie stars on Planetos. First because he’d have a stroke and second because it hadn’t felt casual in months. Set flings ended when the movie wrapped. They didn’t call later, didn’t beg her to visit, didn’t invite her for weekends away together. She couldn’t remember the last time she and Jaime had gone a full day without talking or texting, and they had such frequent video and phone sex that Brienne had accepted he probably wasn’t fucking anyone else. 

But she didn’t want to think about that while talking to her father. 

She tried to keep her voice steady. A simple hug could be “all over each other” in her father’s mind, especially if enough speculation accompanied it. There had been some curiosity about them after the premiere months ago, but it had died down quickly. “The Web? Since when do you look at that trash?” Her father’s speed was more home improvement shows and documentaries about war, not the tawdry Spider Web gossip site. 

“Since Melara at the checkout asked me about my daughter’s  _ hot affair  _ and then showed me pictures.” Gossip spread quickly in Evenfall, where there wasn’t much to do besides fish and talk. Everyone in town must have heard about this by now, and she was certain to get an earful from all the snoopy old ladies the next time she visited. 

“Look, I have another rehearsal right now. Let me find whatever this is that’s got you so upset, and I’ll call you back,” she promised, wracking her brain trying to remember when she and Jaime had so much as touched where anyone could see them. He had to be blowing this out of proportion. They’d had a few meals, gone to one concert, spent a few weekends locked inside hotel rooms. Nothing naked or even suggestive had happened where anyone could see it. 

“This is exactly what I was afraid of when you went off to work with those people.” Selwyn Tarth was suspicious of mainlanders in general, and entertainers in particular because, as he pointed out repeatedly, they lied for a living. “You should come home.”

“I’m working. I can't just leave.” She had weeks left of shooting here on the soundstages in Maidenpool, then exteriors in Oldtown. “Maybe I can come over for a weekend in a month or so.” 

He snorted. “I can find you work here. Good, honest work.”

Brienne’s face flamed. Her dad hadn’t behaved like this in a long time, high-handed and small-minded. He must be spending too much time with Roelle again. That woman lived to disapprove of everything and everyone. “I need to go. I’ll call you later.” Her heart pounded as she typed the gossip site into her browser, and watched the page load.

* * *

  
  


“You,” Brienne snarled, scowling at him from the doorway, still dressed in the skin-tight athletic gear she wore when rehearsing.

That wasn’t exactly the reaction Jaime had expected, after driving to Maidenpool through the worst construction detours the Crownlands DOT had to offer to check on her. “We should talk,” he started.

She snorted and grabbed him by the front of his shirt, yanking him inside and kicking the door shut behind him. “I don’t want to talk.”

“So, I’ll just go then?” He tugged backward against her hold. Jaime had no intention of leaving, but she was so wound up, she clearly needed to let off some steam. It sucked, the first time your privacy was truly stripped away, things that were personal and not at all for public consumption aired for all to see. They could fight, if that helped. They could fuck, if she wanted. Whatever she needed. 

“Fine. Leave,” Brienne snapped. She let him go with a little growl and stalked away, through the foyer and down a hallway. Rooms branched off to each side, but she kept going. 

“I drove two hours,” he reminded her. Jaime had tried calling, five or six times, but after the second call her voicemail box was full. Texts went unanswered. His publicist was still hounding him every half hour or so, asking what he wanted her to do. 

“I didn’t ask you to.” She stopped for a moment to bend down and yank off her shoes, balancing easily on one foot each time. Jaime tried very hard not to stare at her ass encased in tight lycra while she did it, but wasn’t particularly successful. She left the shoes in the hall and set off again. 

Jaime followed. “Well, you wouldn’t pick up the damn phone.” He loathed being ignored. But Brienne didn’t know that silence was one of Cersei’s favorite weapons, because he’d never told her. He’d never told her a lot of things. That would have to change, assuming she stopped walking away from him. 

Brienne whipped around, crowding him against the wall. Her eyes were blazing, her jaw set hard. “My father saw those photos. He wants me to quit my job and move home.”

Well, that was a massive overreaction. The only reason anyone cared about such tame photos was because he was never seen off the red carpet with anyone. “We haven’t done anything wrong,” Jaime tried to remind her, but the hectic flush of her cheeks told him just how angry and embarrassed she was. 

She looked like she was about to say something, but then she pressed her lips in a hard line and just muttered, “I didn’t want this.”

His stomach clenched. “You could’ve said no, any time. Every time.” All the sweetness of their last rendezvous seemed like a distant memory facing Brienne, scowling like a thundercloud and rumbling ominously. She’d strike him down with a harsh word any minute now. 

Her eyes widened, and she gaped at him for a moment. “No, not—shut up,” she growled and pressed forward, her body surging against his, her mouth covering his before he could speak. Feverish, deep, biting kisses, her hands clutching his shirt. 

Jaime tried to slow the kiss down, to gentle his touch even as Brienne angled her hips back so she could work a hand between them, fumbling with the button of his jeans. He cupped her cheek in his hand, his fingers spearing into her short hair, but she just nipped at his lip and yanked his zipper down to palm his length. For all that he did really want to talk, his dick was more interested in her hand stroking him. 

She ended the kiss abruptly, pressing her mouth to his throat, licking his heated skin, tongue dipping into the hollow at the base of his throat, and she released his cock to hook her fingers in the waistband of his jeans. 

“Brienne—”

“No talking.” Her words were sharp, authoritative in a way he knew better from the set than the bedroom. She dropped to her knees, pulling his jeans and boxer-briefs down to free his straining cock. 

And yet he couldn’t help himself. “B—” Jaime gasped when she cupped his balls, not squeezing, just holding them. 

“I need this,” she cut him off. 

Fucking to avoid a difficult conversation never worked out, he knew. “But—”

Brienne did squeeze him then, just a little, not enough to hurt, but enough to silence him. “Later.”

Cersei had made that promise too, sometimes from the same position, crimson lips tantalizingly close to his cock. “Of course, baby,” she’d murmur, but  _ later  _ never came with her. Jaime loathed thinking of her now, like this. It felt disloyal.

Brienne moved one hand to his thigh, rubbing the hard muscle while she wrapped her other hand around his cock. Her hands were large for a woman, so when she leaned close and took the head of his cock into her mouth, his dick was entirely in her grasp, hot and wet at the tip and cooler and rough at the base. The contrast made him impossibly harder, breath catching, his hand going instinctively to her hair. He didn’t direct her, didn’t tug her closer. Brienne knew what he liked. 

She looked up at him, now and then, her eyes dark and heavy-lidded, her lips red and wet sliding over his length. Obscene in the best way, Brienne fully clothed while he was exposed, quiet while he babbled the kind of nonsense he’d be embarrassed about at any other time. She took him apart so easily on the phone, miles apart, but nothing compared to her hands on him, the heat of her mouth and her soft, pleased moans vibrating around his cock. 

He hadn’t been inside her in two weeks, since they’d stolen away to the Quiet Isle. Their little cabin, set apart from the rest as it had once been the only women’s cabin on the island, had been anything but quiet. Jaime hadn’t invited her there with the intention of barely leaving the cabin, but that’s what had happened. 

Thank the Seven the brothers that staffed the place provided room service or they might have starved rather than get dressed. The ancient four-poster bed, the claw-foot tub, the tiny kitchenette, the shadowcat rug in front of the fire, they’d fucked everywhere it was possible to fuck, more than once except for the kitchenette counter, which creaked ominously when Brienne bent over it. The sex had been just as incendiary as ever, maybe better because with every touch he was surer how he felt about her. Right now, even with those damn photos out there, exposing them to prying eyes, he couldn’t regret it. 

He swallowed hard, lightheaded, his heart thudding in his ears. Brienne’s tongue was making him see colors that didn’t exist in nature. His thigh was twitching, lightning gathering in his lower back. He braced his free hand against the wall, struggling to stay upright while his legs turned to jelly. He panted, trying to get control of himself, to savor this feeling a little longer. The look on her face haunted all of his best, dirtiest dreams. He tugged gently on her hair, a warning. 

The ghost of a smile curved her lips even as she slowly released his cock with one last swipe of her tongue across the head. He missed her warmth instantly, his hips twitching toward her again. Her smile turned wicked as she got to her feet, noting his pants and underwear bunched around his thighs. She walked backward, beckoning him to follow as she disappeared into what he fervently hoped was a bedroom.

By the time he’d kicked off his shoes and shoved his pants and underwear to the floor, hurrying after her, a trail of her clothes led to the bed. 

Brienne was lying on pink sheets, a fussy floral quilt pushed off the end of the bed. She was utterly naked, her flaxen hair mussed, her flushed skin even rosier against the sheets. 

A low, hungry sound escaped his throat. “I want your legs wrapped around me. My hips, my head, your choice.” His cock twitched impatiently, still achingly hard. Jaime ripped his shirt off over his head and tossed it away. He rested one knee against the mattress, his hand on her foot, thumb rubbing along her instep, waiting for her answer. 

Brienne stretched and groaned. “Your mouth, gods, give me that fucking smart mouth.”

Jaime gripped her ankles and pulled her closer to him, smirking a little as he noticed Brienne watching him. She’d insisted he didn’t need to bulk up for a role, but she wasn’t above admiring the results. He was strong enough now to throw her around a little, to hold her where he wanted her. “This fucking mouth?” he teased, sucking two fingers into his mouth and wetting them. 

Her breath hitched when he got up on the bed and touched her, his fingers circling and dipping and sliding deep inside her. He kissed her thighs, rubbed his beard against her sensitive skin, and then pulled his fingers free. She watched while he sucked them into his mouth again, tasted her need. “Don’t tease me.” Her voice was raw and desperate. 

He raised an eyebrow. “Says the woman who left me hanging in the hallway.” 

She didn’t seem remotely chastened by that, trying to hook her foot around his shoulder to drag him closer. Jaime didn’t really want to wait, so he wrapped his arms around her thighs, his hands spreading her even wider, and pressed his mouth to her cunt. 

Brienne gripped his hair, and he tightened his hold on her thighs, her heels sliding against the sheets as she tried to get some leverage. Jaime held her steady for his mouth, the hard muscles of her thighs pressing into his hands. He reveled in her taste, her scent, the way her abdominals quivered just at the edge of his vision as he drove her higher. 

Her voice grew hoarse as her moans got louder, her freckled skin flushed from hairline to belly. He loved to watch her, loved the way her eyes would flutter closed, loved how her armor fell away in these moments when his body spoke directly to hers. Her breath stuttered and stalled, her mouth open on a silent cry as her whole body jerked under his tongue.

Before she’d even fully relaxed, Jaime scrambled up between her legs, catching her hands in his and pressing them to the bed above her head. Her eyes opened, unfocused and so dark they were nearly black, pulling him into their endless depths. He kissed her as aftershocks shivered through her, the taste of her still strong in his mouth. 

Jaime pulled away, just enough that she tried to chase him and found she couldn’t, pinned by his hands and the weight of his body. “Want to talk now?” he asked, as if he wasn’t just as desperate for her as she was for him. 

Brienne whined low in her throat, needy, grinding her hips against him. “Fuck me and you can talk all you want.”

He kissed her instead, a soft tease against her full lips, and she arched into him, trying to tug her hands free. She liked to hold him tight, to cup his ass and make his thrusts harder when he was being too gentle for her mood. Jaime held firm, pressing his weight more firmly on their joined hands. She growled a little in response, and wrapped her legs around him as he sank inside her with a guttural moan. 

All the tension he’d been holding, when he saw the photos, when she wouldn’t answer the damn phone, drained away. She couldn’t give this up, not over a few days of tabloid attention. They were too good together. He could read her moans and the flutter of her pulse in her throat and the mindless flex of her hips against him. She trusted him to take control and not hurt her. He’d tried so hard not to hurt her.

A key in a lock, a sword in its sheath, none of the usual metaphors came close to how perfectly they fit together, how at home he felt inside Brienne. Deep, steady thrusts slowly pushed them both up the bed, until her hands grazed the bottom of the ornately carved wooden headboard. “Hold on,” he told her, and her eyes brightened as she complied. 

Jaime released her wrists, trusting her to keep her hands on the headboard. His hands ran down her arms, cupping her breasts as he thrust again, and slid down to grip her hips. The powerful muscles of her arms and shoulders flexed as she held them steady against the increasing force of his thrusts. Her voice grew desperate and keening when he switched briefly to a slow grind, the heat between them slicking their skin with sweat.

She moaned his name, begged him for more, and when he didn’t move fast enough, threatened to flip them over so she could take over. He laughed at that, a dirty chuckle quickly smothered by her bruising kiss. But she got what she wanted, Jaime pounding into her at a punishing pace. Her arms shook, but she held on, knuckles white, her hips meeting his with every thrust. Brienne wasn’t much of a talker in bed when they met, but months of phone sex and videochats had changed that. She had the most delightfully dirty mouth when she was approaching climax.

He’d never last at this rate, but he didn’t slow, didn’t try to fend off his imminent climax. He just slid his hand over so his thumb rubbed her clit with each thrust. He wanted to take her with him when he went over the edge. 

As a child, he’d been warned away from the cliffs near Casterly Rock, but he’d heard the town boys talking about a spot where you could run right off the edge and fall unharmed into the water far below. Tyrion was terrified of it, but one day Jaime had done it, hanging in space for a heartbeat before flying out over the water and plunging straight into its depths. He hadn’t felt like this since then. 

Brienne cried out as she came again, and Jaime followed. 

* * *

By the time she could breathe again, he was already slipping out of her. Jaime flopped down beside her, his gaze catching on the mural that spread across the ceiling. “Are those … children of the  forest?” 

“Yeah.” She rolled onto her side, wanting to drink him in while she could. Just in case. The husky, breathless tone of his voice. The way his hair caught the light. 

His brow knit in confusion. “So they were watching—”

“Yeah.” Not watching, not really, but their eyes seemed to follow her. She’d been creeped out by it since she arrived, had even bought a sleep mask to avoid seeing it first thing in the morning.

“Are you ready to lay down your sword? I don’t want to fight.” 

“I don’t want to fight, either,” she sighed. “But you drive me insane.” This would all be much easier if she could hate him. Brienne almost missed despising him. It was simpler than this ball of confusion in her chest, wanting him and not wanting the trappings of his life. Yesterday she was just a stunt coordinator, anonymous in a crowd, a name no one outside the industry would ever recognize. Today she was the sexiest actor in Westeros’ secret lover. That had been true yesterday too, but it wasn’t splashed across the Internet, fodder for speculation and comment on every social media platform. 

Jaime turned onto his side to face her too, hair mussed and pink cheeked and sporting a dark mark on his shoulder that Brienne didn’t remember giving him. He was gorgeous, better than on-screen, every imperfection routinely airbrushed out of his photos making him more real and more appealing. “It’s going to be fine, trust me,” he promised. “I never talk to the press about my private life. This doesn’t have to be any different.”

Brienne snorted. “They might take a  _ no comment  _ from you, but that won’t work for me. Even if I don’t talk, they’ll find people who will.” Girls who didn’t like her in school, men she’d fucked, stunt performers who resented working under her. She wasn’t, to put it kindly, most people’s cup of tea. She’d been overlooked, patronized, and taken advantage of too many times in her early years in the business. She’d had to develop armor to deal with it. 

“Throw enough dragons at them, and they’ll forget they ever knew you. Just give me the names.” He sounded so certain. Jaime spent money like there was an infinite supply. Maybe for him there was. Between his family wealth and his earnings from a series of blockbusters, he never needed to work again. 

But this was different. “You can’t magic away photos, Jaime. My father saw them. Everyone saw them.”

“So? If this is a scandal, it’s the tamest damn scandal ever. It’s not like someone released one of our videochats.” He huffed in irritation.

Well, that was a horrific idea. She’d said and done things on those chats that she never ever wanted anyone to see. She’d never taken a screenshot, never asked Jaime to send her a nude, nothing that could be hacked from the cloud. “I didn’t want to be famous for my work. I like being behind the scenes. Why in seven hells would I want to be famous for who I fuck?” 

Brienne had stared at the photos for at least five minutes before forcing herself to put away her phone and call in her next actor for rehearsal. There was a shot of them at the  _ Sands of Dorne  _ premiere and another of them on a run in King’s Landing. Then there were two new photos: two people sitting on the beach ignoring the glorious sunrise on the Quiet Isle as they kissed, and the two of them standing close together in the doorway of their cabin, her face clearly visible and his caught in shadowed profile, from the background of another vacationer’s photo. A few comments were positive, but most were brutal. 

Something flashed in Jaime’s eyes, gone so quickly she couldn’t identify it. Then he shrugged. “You don’t have to be famous. What did they see? People kissing? Could’ve been anyone.” He shrugged, and tugged her up against him, belly to belly, legs tangled. “It wouldn’t take much to muddy the waters.” He leaned down to kiss her shoulder, her bicep, his face tucked out of sight. 

She didn’t want to ask, because she knew the answer. “What about the premiere?”  _ Winter is Coming _ was being released the following month, and they’d been planning to go together again. Brienne had already picked out a gorgeous black suit with silver pinstripes, and she’d had plans for afterward.

Jaime sighed against her skin. “My agent has a few actresses in mind. You should come with one of the stunt guys, preferably a blonde.”

“And that’s it?” She didn’t want to go if she wasn’t with him. No one would care if she didn’t attend, and the thought of seeing Jaime with another woman made her nauseous. It was different on camera. Everyone knew it was fake. But this… she wasn’t sure she could take it.

“We shouldn’t see each other until then,” he admitted. A full month apart would be the longest they’d gone without being together since the last premiere. 

Brienne wrestled out of his embrace and sat up, dragging a sheet over her legs. Maybe she should be happy he was taking her discomfort with the photos seriously, but she hadn’t expected him to charge in with a ready-made plan to discredit them. When they were just staying off the press’s radar, she was glad he didn’t mind sneaking around. Now that he was prepared to lie, it felt different, like he was ashamed or embarrassed. Or experienced.

“Have you done this before? Or do you have some kind of fixer on speed dial?” Brienne shifted uncomfortably, suddenly hyper-aware of his semen slicking her upper thighs. This wasn’t even the first time they’d fucked without a condom. The box on the nightstand had been too far away more often than not on the Quiet Isle, and in the moment it hadn’t felt risky to let him inside her bare. 

Jaime flopped onto his back. “Yeah, I’ve done this before.” There was a defensive note in his voice and the jut of his chin. As if she would judge him for having a sexual past, or judge him for not sharing it sooner. 

Except if he’d lied. “You told me you hadn’t been with anyone in years.” And she’d taken that at face value, just like his story that his premiere dates were arranged by his management. For all she knew, he’d fucked every one of those women. Maybe that was his kink, going down on his date in the limo and then walking the red carpet. 

Jaime made her stupid. She shouldn’t care who he’d fucked before her. She had no claim on him. And yet she couldn’t stop studying his face, every tiny line around his eyes and mouth, every twitch of his jaw, waiting for his response.

“I hadn’t. Two years, at least.” Jaime sat up, not bothering to cover himself. Why should he? He looked like the Warrior come to life. “There were some photos once, about ten years ago. I paid off the photographer, I started bringing actresses to parties and premieres. It worked. We were together another eight years and no one caught on.”

“Eight years?” Brienne blurted without thinking. 

Jaime’s expression darkened. “She was married. We couldn’t exactly be public.”

“And you want to do that again?” Suddenly his easy suggestion that she bring another man to the premiere made more sense. Jaime must have come to terms, somehow, with his lover being with someone else too. 

Brienne wouldn’t compare herself to a relationship that lasted that long. If she counted Winterfell, they’d been lovers, friends with benefits,  _ something  _ for around eight months, her longest entanglement with a man by far. Even without the complication of his fame, she was well out of her comfort zone. She loved fucking Jaime, long distance and in person. She loved talking to him. She loved doing ordinary things with him, what little they were able to do. She might even love  _ him _ . But she didn’t want to be hounded by photographers and fans every time they left their homes, splashed across magazine pages, her appearance endlessly scrutinized. 

Jaime’s brow knit, and he reached out to stroke her arm reassuringly. “I want to be with you. And you don’t want to be in the public eye. This is what it takes to make that happen.” 

Jaime leaned forward and kissed her, softer than she expected. Sweet and slow. It still kindled renewed heat in her, and an ache in her chest that she tried to ignore. She pushed the kiss deeper, dirty, her hands roaming over him with intent, stroking all the spots that made him hot, no matter how unlikely that she could rouse him to hardness again so soon. Fucking was easy. Everything else was hard. 

He shifted to grip her ass and hauled her into his lap. Her hand was trapped between them but he didn’t seem to mind. His tongue dipped into the hollow of her throat, his mouth sucked gently along her collarbone. Brienne moaned as he moved to kiss her neck, taking his time, his hands sliding away from her ass to cup her breasts and then to wrap his arms around her. 

The ache in her chest grew until she could barely breathe. “Don’t you want more?” she asked, running her hands through his hair. She’d known the rules of this game from the start. They fucked, they had some fun. They weren’t building anything here, no matter how easy it was to pretend otherwise. It was her own fault for feeling something for him. 

Jaime looked up at her, eyes hazy and dark, full of a need she recognized from every time they’d tumbled back into bed, or a chair, or against the wall five minutes before he needed to leave. “I just want you. You don’t like the plan, tell me what you want me to do. Anything.” 

_ “What if I’d do anything you wanted?” _ Jaime had said the first night they hooked up, pinned to the mats beneath her, dry humping like teenagers. Fucking Jaime was supposed to scratch an itch, it wasn’t supposed to become a craving she couldn’t sate. She wasn’t supposed to miss the sound of his laugh, and the feel of his fingers laced with hers, and the smell of him on her sheets.

“I don’t want you to take someone else to the premiere.” Brienne didn’t like how tentative her voice sounded, but she wasn’t sure how far he really wanted to go. Maybe he got off on the secrecy as much as the sex. Brienne felt a little thrill when she heard women talking about him, when late night hosts asked if his busy schedule left time for romance and he just smiled and said he could always find time for the important things in life. 

His eyebrows rose just a little, surprised. “Then I won’t.” 

“And I don’t want to go with your stunt double.” That came out stronger. 

Some emotion crossed his face that she was tempted to call relief. “You don’t have to.” Jaime bit his lip. “But people will talk.”

“They already are. I’m ugly, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Even in her role, which usually kept her face off-camera, she’d been reminded of that many times over the years. 

Jaime growled and muttered something violent under his breath.

She huffed a laugh and kissed his temple. “You can’t punch them all.” He’d confessed to hitting Connington not long after they started seeing each other again. Ordinarily Brienne didn’t like men trying to defend her. Jaime had been so sheepish about it she couldn’t scold him. 

Jaime sighed and released her, stretching to arrange pillows behind his back before easing back against the pillows. Brienne immediately tried to climb off his lap. Jaime stopped her, hands on her thighs. “Where are you going?”

“I’m crushing you.” Her face was warm again, her abs and thighs tensed to hold her weight off of him. When she rode him, she rarely pressed her full weight against him for long. Jaime wasn’t small by any means, but she was still taller and broader than him, heavier as well. 

“You’re not. I can take it.” Jaime moved one hand to her bicep and tugged her against him. “I’m a fucking action hero, remember?”

She wanted to kiss the little smirk off his lips, so she did. “That’s not actually real. You know that, right?” 

“Would you just let me hold you?” he huffed. 

Brienne tried to relax, tucking her face against his neck, as he ran his fingertips lightly up and down her spine. If he meant to calm her, it wasn’t working. “What do you want to do? And don’t say you’ll do whatever I want.” 

Jaime took a heavy breath and drew his hand up to play with the short hairs at the nape of her neck. “Just hear me out, okay?”

That was going nowhere good, but she nodded anyway. Brienne touched her lips to his skin, inhaled the salty, woodsy scent of him, tried to memorize the feel of his body against hers. 

“We don’t have to respond at all. We don’t owe them anything, the press or the fans.” She could hear his irritation with decades of intrusive questions in those words. “A few weeks, this will die down. We’ll just be another quiet, boring couple occasionally photographed out to dinner or running or on vacation.” 

That sounded far more optimistic than realistic, but Brienne was still stuck on one word. “Couple?” 

Jaime chuckled. “And here I thought you’d object to ‘boring.’ Or possibly ‘quiet.’ You’re very loud when I—”

“Gods, what is wrong with you?” she groaned.

“Well, according to  _ Westeros  _ Magazine, nothing.” 

He was clearly teasing her, but Brienne wasn’t in the mood for it. “Stop, okay? We’re not like them. You don’t have to pretend we are.”

Jaime didn’t respond at first. He slowly stroked warm fingertips across her shoulders in a soothing rhythm. Finally, he coaxed, “Look at me, would you?” 

Reluctantly, and less than gracefully, Brienne managed to shimmy herself back enough to look at his face, his sparkly eyes crinkled around the corners and his brow adorably furrowed. 

“This may have started as a one-night stand, and yeah, at Winterfell I would’ve said we were fuckbuddies if I had to put a name on it. But it’s been eight months, Brienne.” He shook his head. “What are we if we’re not a couple?”

Her throat tightened, and her vision blurred. She blinked rapidly, desperate not to cry. Why would she cry? The time she spent with Jaime had been the best part of her days for months now. If he felt the same… “I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted. 

He reached up and cupped her cheek. “Me neither. So we’ll make up the rules as we go.” 

Brienne leaned in and kissed him, not wanting to see the softness in his eyes anymore. It was so much easier to show him how much she needed him like this. As they kissed and touched, he started to harden beneath her. 

Their phones both rang several times over the next few hours, texts vibrating hers right off the top of the table in the foyer, but they didn’t make it out of bed until long after nightfall.

* * *

  
  
Brienne shifted against the slick leather seats of the limo.

“Nervous?” Jaime asked, squeezing her hand. 

Brienne shrugged. “There are a lot of people.” The crowd was held back behind steel barriers, but they were loud, loud enough to be heard inside the car. And there were photographers, lots of them. She couldn’t see the reporters yet. 

“It’s going to be fine. You don’t have to say a word, and you can always step back if they’re bothering you,” he reminded her. Jaime looked devastating tonight, his hair artfully tousled, his beard just the right length to show off his jawline, his suit perfectly fitted to show off his broad shoulders. 

She shifted again, her trousers rubbing against her tender inner thighs. The long, flowing black pinstriped trousers were a little wrinkled, but there was nothing to be done about that. Maybe they shouldn’t have indulged right before they left Jaime’s condo, but the back of his couch was just the right height for Brienne to bend over. The mirror on the far wall let them both watch as he fucked her from behind while fondling her breasts through the plunging front of her jacket. The suit jacket she wore with no shirt under it, exposing a long column of pale, freckled skin. A few handy strips of double-stick tape insured against a wardrobe malfunction. That was the last thing they needed tonight. 

At least the ride had been long enough to cool the blotchy post-coital flush across her cheeks and chest to a rosy pink no makeup could improve on. She pulled a compact from her pocket and checked her face again in the tiny mirror. Dramatic, dark liner and mascara highlighting her eyes, with glossy rose lips that Jaime hadn’t smudged because she hadn’t allowed him to kiss her mouth. He’d kissed her neck instead while he stroked into her over and over, his husky voice detailing exactly where he wanted her lipstick smeared on his body later. 

Her cheeks were warming again. Brienne snapped the mirror shut, handing it off to him to tuck in his pocket. She hadn’t wanted to carry a purse. Jaime had enough pockets for both of them, and she didn’t want to ruin the line of these trousers. They made her legs look less bulky, and miles long according to Jaime. She loved them, and this time if anyone asked she would remember the name of the designer. She tried vainly to smooth the wrinkles out one more time.

“Brienne.” The softness of Jaime’s tone snapped her out of her nerves. She looked over at him. “I love you.” 

It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, probably not even the twentieth, but it warmed her like the first time. “I know,” she answered, brushing her hand over his cheek. Jaime swore it was fine that she hadn’t said it back. 

She did, though. Love him. Even when he was infuriating or insufferable. She just hadn’t found the right time to tell him. Soon, though. Tonight. One of the best chefs in the city was in Jaime’s kitchen right now, preparing a romantic meal for two while a set dresser Brienne knew turned Jaime’s bedroom into a replica of the love scene from one of their favorite movies. They would be gone when she and Jaime arrived home.

The limo slid to a halt in front of the red carpet. An attendant swept in front of them, blocking the view for a moment. Jaime smiled at her, his eyes fixed on hers as the door opened and light and sound flooded the car. 

He got out smoothly, turned and offered her his hand. He’d assured her that she looked stunning back at the condo, and Brienne hadn’t felt this confident in her looks since the last premiere. She understood a little now, what fun it could be to get dressed up, to feel like someone else for a few hours. Tonight Brienne was someone who wore dangerous heels and a custom-made suit that exposed just a hint of the inner swells of her breasts. 

Brienne knew exactly the moment that the crowd recognized her getting out of the car. There was a noticeable gasp from fans in the crowd, and a rumble of voices along with a sudden burst of flashbulbs. She didn’t look away from Jaime, still holding her hand as she rose to her full height. 

“Don’t forget,” he said just loud enough for her, and only her, to hear. “I’m going to need some seriously filthy handholding to get through this film.” 

Brienne smiled at that, and they stepped away from the safety of the car and onto the red carpet. Jaime gave the fans and the press the only five minutes of this evening that they were entitled to. And she held his hand the whole time.


End file.
